On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph at divmod.com wrote:
> I'd really like "twisted" (and our various "dot product"
> subprojects) to be a trademark that the software freedom conservancy
> can protect and defend.
On May 29, 2008, at 8:25 PM, Tim Stebbing wrote:
> why?
[snip snip]
> trademarking just seems to rub the wrong way, makes people suspicious,
> goes against the ethos man ;)
I have a similar predilection against trademarking, but when I really
think about it, I only feel this way because of the actions of those
who abuse the intent of trademark law. However, it's clear that
legally, if Twisted wants any ability to protect against blatant
misuse of the name, this is the only recourse.
The problem is that there's no clear policy on trademarking for OSS
projects. If Twisted were to approach its trademark policy in a way
similar to the MIT license, I think I would be okay with it. E.g., no
license fees, pragmatic enforcement, etc.
A good example of what I wouldn't want to see is the whole Firefox/
Iceweasel debacle.
On May 29, 2008, at 7:15 PM, glyph at divmod.com wrote:
> For similar reasons, I'd like to have an unambiguous naming
> convention for projects which are *part* of Twisted versus those
> which are built on it or are compatible with it.
[snip snip]
> I'd like to suggest, however, that new projects use the word
> "Twisty" in this context rather than the hopefully trademarked
> "Twisted". i.e. if you are making an implementation of the protocol
> Bloobloo and want to give it a name associated with Twisted, please
> describe it as "Twisty Bloobloo: an implementation of bloobloo for
> Twisted", and name your packages similarly (twistybloobloo.stuff).
> Sun has a great webpage about how to use their trademarks in this
> capacity: http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/.
I have to say, personally, there's pretty much no way I would ever
name a project 'Twisty' anything ;-).
Of course, I understand this wouldn't be a requirement, but if this is
to be a useful marketing technique, whatever the prefix is needs to be
obvious, but also inconsequential. That's the thing that's great about
the Java convention, once you're familiar with it, you pretty much
stop seeing the J. Same with the tired but successful iSomething.
I think a one- or two-letter prefix is pretty much the best option
On May 30, 2008, at 3:18 AM, Chris Miles wrote:
> The "tw" prefix is already used by ToscaWidgets-related packages,
> see http://tinyurl.com/5sjyhu
When choosing which prefix to use, I would suggest against being too
concerned with which obscure software project already uses it.
ToscaWidgets is still in alpha according to their webpage, which
hasn't been updated in ages. I don't mean to deride another project,
but considering the high rate of failure of most OSS projects, unless
it has a community inertia as large as or larger than Twisted's, I say
every project for itself.
Still, though, as far as I can tell, there's no projects using a T
prefix. I kind of like the idea of tStorage and tSNMP, to use the
recent examples.
I am curious, though, what would Divmod do? You guys have some of the
most significant Twisted projects, and would probably be the best
people to set the example, but you already have great names for your
projects. tMantissa or twdAxiom just don't seem very stylin' ;-)...
-phil